"Within that film there's a sequence called 'The Three Caballeros' where Donald Duck sings a song with two other birds. The stuff that they do is amazing. It's pure animation. When I finished watching that sequence, I wanted to be in animation. The vibrant color, the fast action, the freedom of the whole thing. It's like watching a magic show," he says smiling.

A scene from "The Croods," about a family forced to leave the comfort of their cave and learn the harsh truths of the real world. (DreamWorks Animation)

Sanders is sitting in the balcony of a Denver restaurant the day after a friends-and-family screening of his and co-director Kirk DeMicco's own slice of animated magic.

Sanders' father, brother and sisters live in Colorado, where the director was born and raised. Two years ago, the Arvada High School grad returned to town with another feature he'd co-written and co-directed, "How to Train Your Dragon." That 2010 wonder was nominated for a best animated picture Oscar.

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"The Croods" — the tale of a cave family forced to embark on an adventure after their dark, dank home is destroyed — is anything but crude. It features the voice talents of Nicolas Cage as cautious strongman Grug, Emma Stone as his daughter Eap and Ryan Rey- nolds as a more advanced human who may be able to save them.

"Things have gotten to the point at DreamWorks that you can pretty much get whatever you want," says Sanders of his current studio home. "We can do anything, but we can't do everything," someone told him early in the process. "So you need to decide what you really want."

Animated features are notoriously labor-intensive. You need only to sit through the final credit to see that it takes not just a village, but a bustling metropolis to raise an animated feature.

Still, Sanders says he and DeMicco weren't intending "to push the envelope in terms of technology." Writing an animated tale that never resorts to obvious villains and consistently raises existential quandaries was challenge enough.

"The scale of the themes was immense. Because in the caveman world, there's nothing to distract you from the biggest question of all: Why are we here?"

The filmmaking duo thought they were in the clear in terms of computer-graphics logistics for creating their world. Then, along came tar. A tar pit plays a pivotal, sticky role in the Croods' journey.

"That's when the animators went 'What? What!?' " Sanders imitates an increasingly excited conversation. "Are they going to touch it? Will it stick to them? Is it opaque? How viscous is it?" He laughs. "At the end of the movie, the tar was exactly as we'd imagined it."

A good thing, since Sanders' 7-year-old daughter is something of an expert on the black, bubbling, sticky stuff.

One of her favorite places to visit is Los Angeles' La Brea Tar Pits. "She loves playing tar pit," says Sanders. "We bought these little bottles of pretend tar that you can pour out and put your dolls in and they'll sink."

She pretty much knows that tar means the end. So, when dad and daughter finally had the chance to watch the movie together and a scene in which two battling characters are stuck unfolds, she grabbed his arm and whispered, "Are they going to be OK?"

There's pure magic in her question. The answers are pretty enchanting, too.

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